by Jonathan Tudge (2008)
Where do young children spend their time? What activities are they involved in, and who do they interact with? How do these activities and interactions vary across different societies and cultural groups? This book provides unique answers to these questions, by describing the lives of three-year-olds in the United States, Russia, Estonia, Finland, South Korea, Kenya, and Brazil. Each child was followed for the equivalent of one complete waking day, whether at home, in childcare, on the streets, at the shops, etc. Graphic displays and verbal descriptions of the children's everyday activities and interactions reveal both the ways in which culture influences children's lives and the ways in which children play a role in changing the cultural groups of which they are a part. This book also has a clear theoretical rationale and illustrates why and how to do cultural-ecological research.
Cathie Pelletier
Mattie Gifford fears the worst when her wayward son, Sonny, runs afoul of the law. She learns to her relief that Sonny has not shot "that nice Mr. Clinton," but he has taken two women and a poodle hostage in his ex-wife's trailer.
Eli H. Newberger
"From birth to late adolescence, The Men They Will Become delves to the deepest roots of male character. A baby boy, says the author, has traits but no character. As he grows, particular characteristics - attachment, honesty, self-control, sportsmanship, generosity, courage - are either nurtured or thwarted. Intrinsic biological drives combine with styles of parenting as well as gender-polarizing forces in the culture to create either the admirable qualities we all admire or those we deplore and fear."--BOOK JACKET. "Rather than looking for flaws and vulnerabilities, or trying to make boys more like girls, Newberger celebrates the differences, the wonderful qualities that make boys boys, and shows us how to nurture and encourage them."--BOOK JACKET.
Denis Wood and Robert J. Beck
"What is home for a child," ask Denis Wood and Robert Beck, "but a field of rules?" And in these mundane "dos and don'ts," they contend, are carried our deepest beliefs and values, our generational memories and cultural heritage. In Home Rules Wood and Beck undertake a remarkable exploration of the "built environment" and our relationship to it. Their objective is to explore and understand a specific room - the living room at 435 Cutler Street, the home of Denis and Ingrid Wood and their children, Randall and Chandler. But ultimately their search is for an understanding of every room as an institution, a cultural creation centered on fundamental human needs, activities, and beliefs. In its narrowest sense, then, Home Rules is a case study of a particular family's life in a particular room. Based on Beck's interviews with each member of the Wood family, the book identifies 223 rules addressing safety, behavior, and treatment of the room's seventy objects. A tour of the room proceeds object by object - screen door, door, doorframe, window in the door - with each object presented first in its physical form with a photograph and description, then in terms of the rules that govern its use or treatment, and finally in light of the values and meanings that surround it ("What are the walls that one should not put one's hands on them?"). In their description and analysis, Wood and Beck show how every room we inhabit is much more than an architectural construct. As the manifestation of meanings and values - conveyed to children as spoken rules - the room is part of the larger network of rules and customs that exist for all people in their domestic environments. By "living the room" with our children, we introduce them to a way of life, a system of beliefs, and a manner of dealing with any environment or place. Ultimately, the authors conclude, a room is a memory. It stores in the arrangement of its parts how we sit together and interact. It holds for children the memory of rooms in which their parents grew up, which in turn were memories of other, more distant rooms, and so on across the generations
Nellie Hermann
Ruby is the youngest child in the tightly knit Bronstein family, a sensitive, observant girl who looks up to her older brothers and is in awe of her stern but gentle father, a Holocaust survivor. But when Ruby is ten, her eldest brother enters the hospital and emerges as someone she barely recognizes. It is only the first in a startling series of tragedies that befall the Bronsteins and leave Ruby reeling from sorrow and disbelief. As Ruby's family fractures, she finds solace in friendships and the beginnings of romance, in the normalcy of summer camp and the prom. But her anger and heartache shadow these experiences, separating her from those she loves, until she chooses to reconcile what she has lost with whom she has become.